(November 1813–February 24, 1895), was an American journalist and diplomat. He was the first to use the term “manifest destiny.” Appointed U.S. Minister to Portugal, he also was the founder and editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and the editor of the New York Morning News. From September to November, 1839, he wrote a series of editorials in the Democratic Review, in which he stated:
In this ennobling influence, Christianity and democracy are one. What, indeed, is democracy but Christianity in its earthly aspect, Christianity made effective among the political relations of men.2473
In another of the editorials written for the Democratic Review, 1839, John L. O’Sullivan commented:
We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past.
We are the nation of human progress; and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.
We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands that “the gates of hell”—the powers of aristocracy and monarchy—“shall not prevail against it.”
The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest the excellence of divine principles;
to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High—the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere; its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens;
and its congregation a unison of many republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God’s natural and moral law of equality.2474
In the fall of 1839, in an editorial for the Democratic Review, John L. O’Sullivan detailed:
All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God.
For this blessed mission to the nations of the world which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth has America been chosen;
and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry glad tidings of peace and goodwill where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field.
Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?2475
In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan was the first to use the term “manifest destiny” in regards to America’s westward growth. He explained the term:
Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.2476